{"id":304094,"date":"2010-02-10T17:01:42","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T22:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/economics\/2010\/02\/10\/greece-goldman-spat-over-deficit-figures\/"},"modified":"2010-02-10T17:01:42","modified_gmt":"2010-02-10T22:01:42","slug":"greece-goldman-spat-over-deficit-figures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/304094","title":{"rendered":"Greece, Goldman Spat Over Deficit Figures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greek finance ministry officials can be forgiven if they\u0092re a little touchy when it comes to the accuracy of their budget figures. Massive revisions to deficit estimates by Athens last fall helped trigger the ongoing crisis in Greek finances that is expected by many to end with some form of bailout by the European Union in coming weeks.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Goldman Sachs<\/strong> sent out a research note, based on December figures from the Greek finance ministry, suggesting that Athens might have to revise up its 2009 deficit from 12.7% of GDP to as high as 16%. Goldman economists spotted what they saw as a EUR6 billion addition to spending in December, taking the deficit for the year up to EUR37.9 billion from less than EUR30 billion previously. \u0093It is a stunning revision to make,\u0094 Goldman economists wrote.<\/p>\n

The Greek finance ministry pushed back hard Wednesday, saying it \u0093categorically refutes information circulating today of an alleged revision of the 2009 state budget deficit figures.\u0094<\/p>\n

The data cited by Goldman refer to the \u0093cash\u0094 balance, which includes settlement of hospital debts totaling EUR1.2 billion. Other payments, like bank transfers, count toward the public debt but not the deficit.<\/p>\n

The latest figures, Athens said, are \u0093in full compliance with the estimate of the government deficit\u0094 established in the 2010 stability program. Economists at J.P. Morgan<\/strong> weighed in on Greece\u0092s side, saying the numbers \u0093do not imply another revision\u0094 to the deficit. The monthly cash balance numbers are different from the definition used in European budget rules. And they include the hospital debts that accrued in the past and other payments that may not be part of the 2009 deficit.<\/p>\n

Still, the fact that Greece felt compelled to refute one economic research report is a sign of the times in Europe these days.<\/p>\n

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Greek finance ministry officials can be forgiven if they\u0092re a little touchy when it comes to the accuracy of their budget figures. Massive revisions to deficit estimates by Athens last fall helped trigger the ongoing crisis in Greek finances that is expected by many to end with some form of bailout by the European Union […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-304094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}